"So the one who attacked the current Council mbers with those explosions... was this guy."
Carla stared at Jackal with a grave expression.
"You've been targeted, so let's get out of here, now!" Lucy urged Michello, who was still busy complaining that Jackal had blown up his house.
"You don't need to tell twice, I'm leaving!" Faced with a life-or-death situation, Michello was decisively practical.
Leaning on his cane, he turned and hurried off at once.
Wendy still wanted to stay and help Natsu, but Natsu stopped her.
"I've got this. You guys take them and go."
"Heh."
Jackal let out a snide laugh and swept both hands outward. Instantly, the buildings all around the lake island exploded one after another.
At least for the mont, Michello and the others had nowhere left to run.
"The buildings blew up! Hurry and run for it!"
Even Lucy sounded a little shaken. "He's actually attacking innocent residents too?!"
"You bastard!!!" Natsu ground out through clenched teeth, fury blazing in his eyes.
Enraged, Natsu leapt into the air with flas coiling around his legs.
"Boom."
A massive blast swallowed him whole.
Unfortunately for Jackal, explosions and fire were the two things that ant the least to Natsu.
Wrapped in the flas, Natsu inhaled with all his might and devoured the explosion in no ti at all.
Even Jackal broke out in a cold sweat.
'What the hell is wrong with this guy? He's eating explosions? Are you the demon here, or am I? Even I wouldn't eat that stuff.'
"Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"
Having eaten two rounds of flas, Natsu's power had swelled again, and his fist crashed squarely into Jackal's face while the demon was still frozen in disbelief.
Jackal had barely hit the ground before Natsu burrowed forward and smashed him with a rising uppercut.
Then Natsu slamd one foot down, surged after the demon again, and closed the distance in an instant.
"Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"
One punch blasted Jackal into a wall, and before he could recover, Natsu followed with Fire Dragon's Hook, sending him crashing through several more walls before he finally slamd into the ground.
Leaning on his cane, Michello trembled all over.
"This is the first ti I've ever seen a Fairy Tail Mage fight from this close... so this is how strong they are?!"
What kind of madness had possessed them in the past to think they could make trouble for Fairy Tail?
Even Tartaros was getting beaten down like this.
After rolling several tis, Jackal finally dug in his hands and forced himself to stop.
"You're pretty interesting, you know that?"
"But there's sothing I need to tell you."
"Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"
Natsu doesnt give a shit.
Still burning with rage, he used fire to accelerate and charged Jackal again. By this point, he had already forgotten what Raizel had said about Jackal.
No, more accurately, he had probably never listened properly to begin with.
His flaming right fist slamd into Jackal's face again.
"Not even close!"
Natsu dropped directly on top of the demon after knocking him down and sat on his chest.
Then ca a rciless barrage.
Fists blurred into afterimages as blow after blow rained down like a storm.
In the blink of an eye, Jackal's sharp, narrow face had been beaten into a swollen ss.
But Natsu, still furious, showed no sign of stopping.
"Natsu..."
"He still hadn't even finished talking!"
"Right, we needed to ask where their base is," Lucy said, and only then did Natsu finally rember.
But by that point, Jackal was already covered in blood and completely unconscious.
Just as Natsu was about to leave with Michello and the others, the Jackal who had seed utterly knocked out suddenly sat up again.
Lucy froze for a mont. Natsu had not held back at all just now.
"Natsu's attacks didn't work?!"
Natsu himself looked like he had seen a ghost as he stared at the demon rising back to his feet.
"And another thing," Jackal said, grinning, "you really ought to let people finish what they're saying."
"Natsu, your hand!" Lucy shouted.
"What the—?"
Strange black markings had appeared across Natsu's hands and legs, glowing with an eerie golden light.
"My curse can turn anyone who touches into a bomb. Tell ... how many tis do you think you touched ?"
"Get away from !"
BOOM!!!
A blinding golden light erupted from Natsu's body, and a mushroom cloud burst outward with him at its center.
When the smoke finally began to clear, Natsu stood there with vacant eyes, his clothes in tatters, before slowly collapsing to the ground with his mouth hanging open.
"Oh? Your body's still intact. Not bad. Pretty impressive for a little fireball."
Jackal spread his arms wide and laughed arrogantly.
"He passed out."
"Looks like he won't be moving for a while."
"If you give the information I want, I'll be kind enough to kill only your granddaughter. See? I'm a pretty generous guy."
Michello was so frightened he could not even speak. He turned and ran without looking back.
"You're not getting away!"
Jackal sprinted after him in a bizarre hunched posture, moving so fast it looked almost unnatural.
"Wendy!"
"Right!"
"Sky Dragon's Roar!"
Jackal slamd one hand onto the ground, detonating an explosion that blew Wendy's roar apart.
"Sky Dragon's Wing Attack!"
Wendy unleashed a cutting strike, but Jackal rely waved at the air, and her attack exploded before it could reach him.
"If you don't get out of my way, I'll blow the two of you up along with them. Hahaha!"
"Open, Gate of the Scorpion: Scorpio!"
"A Celestial Spirit? So the lady's got an interesting trick like that, huh?" Jackal laughed when he saw Lucy summon Scorpio.
"Sand Buster!"
From the weapon on his tail, Scorpio unleashed a spiraling sand tornado that shot straight toward Jackal.
But not only did the sand cyclone fail to stop him, once Jackal blew it apart it actually ruined Lucy and Wendy's own field of vision as well.
"Then I'll use a rapid-fire technique!"
Scorpio swung the weapon on his tail again, sending out four vertical sand tornadoes in quick succession, closing in on Jackal from all sides.
"I told you, it won't matter how many tis you try."
The swirling sand was blasted apart once more, and Jackal stood there amid the storm of yellow dust, his eyes glowing red.
He was just about to take Lucy and Wendy out—when the Natsu who had only just passed out monts earlier ca hurtling back in, flas wrapped around his right arm!
His elbow smashed brutally into Jackal's face, sending the demon crashing through several walls again before slamming into a building hard enough to leave a crater, after which he dropped into the river below.
"I'm telling you, you really don't learn, do you? You touched again."
"I figured out the trick."
Natsu lowered his eyes to the dazzling golden light burning on his right elbow.
"The trick?" Jackal sneered mockingly.
Natsu lowered his head, brought his mouth close to his elbow, and stared straight at the curse mark.
BOOM!!!
When the smoke cleared, Natsu was standing there completely unhard, scarf fluttering in the wind, while Jackal could only stare in sheer horror.
The instant the explosion had gone off, Natsu had devoured every last scrap of fla and energy it produced.
"See?" Natsu said with a bright, almost innocent smile.
"That's impossible. No... absolutely impossible... I refuse to believe it."
Jackal would rather believe his own eyes had broken than accept what he was seeing.
'What kind of lunatic stuck his face right up against a bomb?'
"I'm all fired up now."
"Just what the hell... are you?!"
"I'm Natsu of Fairy Tail!"
Before the last word had even fully left his mouth, he was already in front of Jackal again, his right fist slamming into the demon's face like a cannon blast.
"There you go again—you touched again! You're going to explode! Blow apart into pieces!"
Jackal's jaw dropped in absolute shock.
Because right in front of him, Natsu shoved that curse-marked fist straight into his own mouth...
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